Tuesday, 4 December 2012

A miniature advent calendar and a snowy scene

I finally managed to finish making Celestine's advent calender- two days late but better than never!

Celestine is very pleased with it:

As you can see she is in the festive spirit. She has put tinsel in her hair!

Here's what the calendar will look like when all the doors are opened: (I made two- one of them was a tester to make sure it would work properly)

I have to admit that all the pictures behind the doors are pictures I found on google. (There's even a picture of the Grinch there and little Cindy-Lou) BUT I did paint the main image myself!

I began by painting Santa (he looks like a very small Santa but never mind) and his reindeer flying across the sky as a spot illustration. The original reason I painted this picture was for my grandmother who likes me to paint a Christmassy thing every year for the front of her church carol service programme. See last years here. Ideally it would have been religious themed but after about seven or so years of drawing nativity scenes I had run out of ideas and so went with reindeer instead. Also I really wanted to draw some reindeer. They always become my favourite animal come December!

ANYWAY so I drew the reindeer and Santa and then thought 'hmm, this could be a good image for an advent calendar if only it had a background...'

And so then I drew a background (thinking it was also a good excuse to practice drawing a snowy village scene from above seeing as I had never drawn one before) and then put it underneath the reindeer picture on Photoshop and voila!

here's the template/design I used to make my calendar. I thought I would upload it here in case you wanted to make one too- even though it is already the 4th!

Unfortunately i had to draw the outline and all the little boxes by hand because I can't work out how to draw a box in Photoshop. I know it looks messy here but once it's made it looks fine.

You need this template too (below) to place exactly over the front part so that you can cut the boxes (with a scalpel) in the right place. I hope that makes sense...

I also put a bit of silver glitter on the front of mine when it was finished. I added a bit of sparkle to the trees and snow. Not sure it really shows up in the photos though... maybe a tiny bit. Gotta love a bit of glitter- especially at Christmas time.

And you know what, I realised I don't actually have an advent calendar of my own to open this December! I will just have to share Celestines....

Have you been doing anything to get into the Christmas Spirit yet this season?

7 comments:

Your advent calendar is fantastic! Celestine must be thrilled! I've been buying miniature Christmas foods, making mini presents for a friend, and decorating my dollhouses. That has definitely been putting me in the spirit! :-D

Its absolutely beautiful - and you are so sweet to include the template. I made one once many years ago - I used to love the few pictures of angels that were on the bought ones - so I filled my little boxes up mainly with angels (cut out from Christmas cards) - and boy was I sorry - I got so tired of opening yet another angel that it was a real treat to get a picture of anything else!!